Talk:Helheim
Warriors Vs. Civilians So Valhalla is pretty much like Warrior Heaven and Helheim is Civilian Heaven? ( 11:54, August 1, 2018 (UTC)) That’s the gist of it. Of course, even warriors can go to Helhiem if they aren’t selected by the Valkyrie. Per Ankh ED 16:12, August 1, 2018 (UTC) Oh, I see. So it's pretty much like a huge pyramid scheme with Odin at the top. The Valkyries decide who gets to go to Valhalla and who doesn't. And Odin controls the Valkyries. So ultimately this all boils down to some form of elitism. ( 07:36, August 2, 2018 (UTC)) Well, when you’re building an army of dead warriors, you want the best of the best. side note, in the original myths, Odin only got half the warriors. The other half went to Folkvangr and... oh. Freya got that. I guess he just gets all of them in this universe. Per Ankh ED 16:09, August 2, 2018 (UTC) Does Folkvangr even exist in this universe? Seems kind of redundant in my opinion, especially since we know what happened to Freya. Sidenote: I was always kind of confused about why there was multiple versions of afterlives in Norse Mythology to be honest. At least the Greeks/Romans believed that they ended up in the same place. ( 02:02, August 3, 2018 (UTC)) Even the Hellenistic (the proper term from Greco-Roman belief systems) Underworld is split in four pieces: Elysium, Asphodel, Tartarus and Punishment. And they aren't "versions" of the afterlife, they're three seperate ones. As stated earlier, Valhalla and Folkvangr are for the warriors, the combatants, the Honorable Dead. As a side note, there's another afterlife for those who die at sea: the abode of the goddess Ran. A raandom fact, Helhiem is actually comparable to Aaru/Duat in Egypt and the Underworld of Greece: In Aaru and Helhiem, people generally do what they did in life: eat, drink, practice magic, etc. and in both Helhiem and the Underworld people are punished for their misdeeds in life. Per Ankh ED 02:12, August 3, 2018 (UTC) Norse believed in sacrifice as well, but it wasn't quite as frequent and was done more as a thanks than a ransom. They also believed the Gods took interest in them after death, dividing them. Warriors would fight, drink mead and eat meat in Valhalla under Odin. Pleasant peaceful people would be accepted by Freya where they would eat wheat and rye, never worrying about crop famine and bad weather, sailors that died in the sea drink and eat fish in Egir's hall under the ocean and the wicked, enslaved and lazy people were frozen in Hel. Even Hel isn't really that bad, all you do is sleep dreamlessly forever until Ragnorok. You aren't tortured or anything, at least to my knowledge.﻿ ( 00:33, September 6, 2018 (UTC)) Hel's Crush I just had a thought that might explain why Baldur may end up in Helheim in a future game. What if Hel (the ruler of Helheim) actually has a crush on Baldur and secretly manipulated events to have him be in Helheim so that she could try to court him? You have to admit that would be a pretty interesting spin on the old myth. ( 05:22, August 30, 2018 (UTC)) Too Many Afterlives Honestly the afterlives in Norse Mythology have always been kind of vague. At least for me. Maybe somebody out there smarter or more knowledgeable about the myths will have a way of explaining this. On the one hand you have Valhalla which is ruled by Odin and I suppose is where all the supposed "heroes" go. And then there's Hel where the leftovers are pretty much sent. If it stopped there, then things would be much simpler. But it doesn't. Instead to complicate matters even further we also have multiple other known afterlives that each apparently operate under their own regulations and deities. The most popular, or most famous, of which is probably Folkvangr ruled by the Vanir goddess Freya (who interestingly enough also happens to be Odin's wife). You remember how the souls of all the warriors go to Valhalla after they die? Well, apparently Folkvangr was involved with this condo timeshare scheme as well. According to most versions of the mythology, the souls of the warriors were split into two separate groups. One half went to Valhalla. The other to Folkvangr. Why exactly this system existed, we don't know. We can assume that Valhalla was for only the really Elite warriors and Folkvangr was likely for all the lower-class but if so, then it's never expanded on (also if that is the case, then why didn't they just get sent to Helheim? If they really sucked that badly then you would think that Odin or Freya or whoever's in charge wouldn't have any interest in them. Maybe they just didn't want to give Hel any unnecessary advantages). There's also Ran's Net, which if the myths are to be believed was basically just a large fishing net where sailors who had died at sea were forced to swim underwater for all eternity (why exactly is Helheim considered such a bad place again?). Yeah. That's right. Your forced to spend all eternity trapped in a net underwater in the soul-crushing darkness in deep pressure. And I was afraid to go sailing before... And that's not even scratching the surface! You see the issue here? Too many conflicting afterlives. I hope that in the future games, they'll try to clear some of this stuff up. ( 09:19, March 27, 2019 (UTC))